


Your Name

by marmolita



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2747021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/pseuds/marmolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of glimpses into Felix's life and journey toward self-acceptance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



> Mithen, I know this doesn't quite meet your dear author letter requests, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! WARNINGS: Nothing in this fic exceeds anything that's in the canon source material and most of this is just referring to canon events, but just for safety, warnings for underage sex, rape, forced sex work including underage sex work, torture, and mentions of incest. Also includes mentions of BDSM though nothing explicit.

What is your name?

***

Your name is Felix; it is the only thing your mother gives you. You won't remember the journey from Troia to Melusine, but you will remember her eyes gazing into your own, and you will remember her singing.

Your mother is a free spirit, unable to be held back by anyone, a beautiful woman with her own motivations and her own dreams for the future. You won't ever know her well enough to discover how much you resemble her though, because she sells you to a thief-keeper when you are only four years old.

***

Your name is Felix Skew-Eyes. That is what the other kept thieves call you when they think you can't hear them. You are eight years old and the Simside cant is so thick in your voice that even kids from Queensdock have trouble understanding you. You are an adequate pickpocket at best, a clumsy disaster at worst, so Keeper has decided to put you to better use.

The first time he makes you fellate a man you choke and gag and only barely manage not to vomit. The feeling of not being able to breathe reminds you of being held face down in the Sim and feeling yourself slowly drowning. You know that if you do as poorly here as you did at pickpocketing Keeper will give you to the Sim without a second thought, so you watch the other boys and girls on the street and you learn from them.

You are a far better whore than you ever were a pickpocket.

***

Your name is Felix, but the patrons of the Shining Tiger know you only as the red-haired boy. You are fourteen years old and everyone you ever loved is dead. Your mother and Joline burned in the fire, and you don't yet know that you have a brother. 

The other martyrs at the Shining Tiger don't like you much because you are popular with the patrons. It's a strange thing: none of the boys you work with wants to be a prostitute, and yet there is still competition to be the best. When all other options are gone, you make the best of what you have, and so you smile at the patrons and tremble under their fingers. They like the scars on your back from Keeper's whip, and if they believe you received them from other tarquins you do nothing to correct them.

Eventually, you learn to enjoy your work.

On the day Malkar Gennadion buys you from Lorenzo, you allow the hope back into your heart that maybe you could love again.

***

Your name is Felix Harrowgate; at least, that is what Malkar tells you your name is now. You are sixteen years old and the Simside is draining out of your voice.

You know now that Malkar does not love you. You don't want to love him, but when Malkar calls you to his bedroom you arch into his touch like you will never get enough of it.

Sometimes, you think you hate Malkar Gennadion. Sometimes you fear you are going to lose yourself and there will be nothing left of Felix; your body will be an empty shell, filled up with Malkar.

Is that what love is?

***

Your name is Felix Harrowgate and you are from Caloxa. That is how Shannon Teverius introduces you to his friends, when you and he are in the first blush of your relationship -- after Malkar, after breaking the obligation de sang. That is how the other wizards of the Mirador know you, and they respect you for it. How could they know any differently? Your vowels are as correct as any of theirs now, and it's not as if any of them have been to Caloxa.

You never tell Shannon that you love him. You don't want him to end up like Joline, or worse -- like Malkar, so you never say those words. Does he think less of you for it? You're not sure, but you've been together long enough that it's not an issue anymore, the same way it's not an issue that you prefer to have sex in the dark, or that you sometimes disappear into the Arcane for hours and come back with your skin scrubbed raw with cheap soap.

Does Shannon ever notice? If he does, he never says anything about it.

You've been hurt and used your whole life. Now, for the first time, it's your turn to do the hurting.

***

Your name is Felix Harrowgate, and your brother's name is MIldmay Foxe. That is the name you gave him, because like you, the only thing he got from your mother is a given name, and a very strange one at that.

Your brother reminds you of the worst of what you were as a child. He reminds you of everything that Malkar beat out of you. Whenever you hear his voice, slurring his vowels together, you can't help remembering Malkar binding your senses, suspending you upside down, carefully slicing you along your old scars to avoid making any new ones, or even casually backhanding you across the face.

You can't help remembering Keeper's voice, cursing and snarling while he held you under the Sim.

You don't want him to follow you. You don't want him to come with you to the gardens. You don't want to have to rely on him to make sure you have food and shelter, but in your moments of clarity you know you are insane and that you can't be trusted. If you have to rely on somebody, how fitting that it be someone who reminds you of the worst of your past. You suppose it's only what you deserve.

***

Your name is Felix Harrowgate, a wizard of the Mirador. It's a name that has been in disrepute, but is now being restored to its former status thanks to the fact that you have mended the Virtu. Now that Malkar is dead, Mildmay restored, and Gideon in your bed, you think perhaps you can finally begin to live your life again.

Instead, Malkar's rubies weigh heavily in your pocket, and the anger you wish you were rid of circles in the air. The thrum of the obligation d'ame connecting you to your brother is like a persistent prickling at the back of your throat, a chatter running throughout your dreams keeping you from getting any rest. You're tormented daily by the way he reminds you of Keeper and by the way his lithe body rouses your interest. You're tormented by the fact that you keep hurting him, hurting Gideon, hurting anyone who will let you do it to them, when really the one you want to hurt is yourself.

You would never admit it to yourself, but sometimes you wish you could go back to the Shining Tiger. You wouldn't have your magic, which is the most essential part of you, but things were so simple there. You didn't have to think about anyone but yourself, the phoenix let you forget anything that upset you, and if you started having that itchy feeling like there was something more that you needed, that feeling that made you lash out at people, well, there was always a tarquin waiting to beat it out of you.

Now, you lash out at people and they let you. Malkar's rubies call to you from their wash-leather bag and you wonder if you are any better than him.

***

Your name is Felix Harrowgate, and you are an exile. You would have let them kill you, you wanted to die, but--

Mildmay says that he deserves to die for the things he's done. Perhaps he's right, But he doesn't deserve to die for the things _you've_ done. He doesn't deserve to be in exile with you either, and he doesn't deserve to be saddled with you, with your uselessness, your lack of common sense, your anger and your sadness.

Yet he trudges beside you, day after day, shares a room with you night after night, and tries to talk to you. He tries to be your friend and your brother, and you can't comprehend why he would possibly want to. If not for the obligation d'ame, you're certain he would have left you long ago.

He pulls you out of a river when you fall in. You fight, over and over, one way or another. You hurt him again and again and you can't seem to stop yourself from doing it.

And then, Mildmay gets sick. He's been sick before, but in the Mirador, where you had servants and money and safety, and here? Here you have nothing, not even enough money to pay your hotel bill.

Going back to prostitution is the biggest relief you've ever felt in your life. It's so easy, so familiar. It's your childhood. Finally, something you are good at, something you won't screw up. Malkar had said it to you all those years ago -- "He's a clever little beast, but his true aptitude is always going to be for being fucked."

You go to the Duke of Murtagh as a shadow, and finally are forced to admit the ugly truth..

It's not just something you're good at. It's something you _need_.

***

Your name is Felix Harrowgate and you have been given a lecturer position at the Institution, despite being under the choke-binding that holds your magic. You've come a long way from Melusine to get here, and you've come a long way in yourself. Nearly losing Mildmay to the Winter Fever, taking on an apprentice, admitting the truth of yourself to the Duke of Murtagh -- these things have finally allowed you to come to terms with who and what you are.

"Do you think you have to let people fuck you for them to love you?" Mildmay says to you one day, hitting far closer to home than you ever expected from him. Three years ago, you would never have had a conversation like this with him. One year ago you would never have had a conversation like this with him. But all that's happened since your exile has changed you, both of you, and you're trying now, really trying to be a better person. To be a better brother. Mildmay says he won't leave you even though he can, he says he loves you even though you can't quite bring yourself to say it back.

Once, a long time ago, you told him that you couldn't change who you were. You'd tried to make him understand, on a boat on the ocean just out of Troia, that hurting people was just what you did.

You were wrong. You _can_ change, you _want_ to change, and you're trying so hard now that you think it just might happen. Mildmay deserves a better brother. He deserves a better life, and maybe he's killed people but so have you.

He tells you about everything he did for his Keeper, like it's supposed to turn you away from him, but you know you've done things just as terrible. He forgives you for what you've done and you forgive him, and you start to move on with your life together, not as esclavin and obligataire but as brothers.

When he gives you your rings back and says, "A peacock ain't a peacock without the feathers," you know everything is going to be all right.

***

Your name is Virtuer Felix Harrowgate, and you are the lighthouse keeper of Grimglass. You live in Grimglass Hall with Kay Brightmore and Vanessa Pallister, and with your brother, Mildmay Foxe. You don't hurt people all the time anymore, though it's still a struggle. It helps that you've worked out an arrangement with the Duke of Murtagh, who comes to Grimglass regularly as part of managing his domain. He scratches the itch that you can't quite name, and even though you never say it out loud you know Mildmay knows what's going on.

He doesn't mind though, doesn't bother you about it, and you don't mind that he's taken up with one of the maids in the hall. In fact, you're happy for him.

To be honest, you're happy for yourself. Grimglass may never feel like home the way Melusine did, but you finally feel like you know who Felix is, and that maybe, just maybe, being Felix isn't so bad after all.


End file.
